I identify with radical feminist ideas and engage critically with contemporary gender identity theory(terf). My main focus is the critique of gender stereotypes and the social expectations placed on women regarding how they should behave look and live.
In general, this current began with the works of Janice G. Raymond, who wrote the book “The Transsexual Empire”, on which I base my position. She defined women as a biological group, with gender socialization that women go through throughout their lives, absorbing the stereotypes of the patriarchal society in which they grow up. Trans women go through male gender socialization and cannot understand the women’s issues that feminism is fighting against. It is impossible to feel like someone you have never been.
Men gain access to women’s toilets in order to harass them and also spread stereotypes about women by doing manicures, makeup, and growing out their hair etc. Moreover, queer theory is intended to help privileged white men hide their gendered violence by erasing the fact that the aggressor is male. Women, however, cannot do this, because they are not a privileged class. After all, a rich person can pretend to be poor, but a poor person cannot pretend to be rich. Transition harms women by spreading gender stereotypes and masking male violence.
And no, I do not hate transgender people and in general I do not hate people for this and I would certainly never belittle anyone. I hate the system developed by a capitalist patriarchal world. I have no problem with people wanting to feel more comfortable in society and in their own bodies but this issue should not be solved by reinforcing stereotypes about women and men.
Being trans is one of the biggest displays of breaking stereotypes, people literally reject the entire gender framework set out for them. This is a larger display of defiance of patriarchy than majority of the things i, as a cis woman, do.
So id like to ask what we are doing to break the stereotypes between men and women?. I am a woman with long hair, who wears makeup, who paints her nails. Every morning i, similarly to a trans woman, do my hair and makeup in order to feel more feminine and therefore more societally attractive. Should i be denied my womanhood because i reinforce these stereotypes?
And do we believe housewives should be excluded from feminism?
The most harmful stereotype is not how we present ourselves physically but that women are supposed to be subservient, palatable and accepting of misogynistic social limitations. Being a housewife was the limit for women for thousands of years and now some people voluntarily become part of that group despite its link to patriarchal ideals. Trans woman, as i said, reject their own framework despite prejudice and judgment and majority do not transition to become housewives (the most conventional, subservient role a woman can play) therefore it is rather hypocritical to say trans women aren’t women when they defy the most suppressive and damaging stereotypes.
Women are not a hive mind, socialisation is different based on race, culture, religion etc, i do not understand a woman from another social class, religion and continent any better than i understand a transwoman living in my city. ‘They dont get what its like being a woman’ is a sad denigration of feminist framework if u think it all just works on ‘oh we get each other over one thing!’ A transwoman, most are exposed to and engage with progressive ideas, may be less inherently misogynistic than a woman who has been raised in, emphatically wants to enforce and conforms to rigid gender roles.
We all fail to be feminists in one way or another, trans women commit no worse crime than cis women who choose to be heavily feminine presenting. It is a bad critique and definitely a deeply odd basis to assume for who should be included in feminism as it is in fact the feminist assumption that all have been conditioned to patriarchy and all will enforce it in some sense. The only basis on which this works is that ‘outsiders’, people that are new to what has been classed as womanhood by the feminist movement as a whole need to be perfect or near perfect to get in. This is also the type of thinking that excluded black women from white feminism, black women had to be ‘white enough’ to have their fight over their womanhood considered. We frown upon this social division now, but today we want the next division of biological sex? If we follow this thinking of ‘its us and them’, if we follow the social divisions that already exist within our world and emanate them within our feminism there is no reason that black and white women should have the same feminist treatment either, or straight and queer women. Feminism based upon pre existing social divisions is dangerous, especially so for women in minorities and does little more than enforce prejudices, it is not something that should be readily invited into the movement. Once again we cannot simply assume that a current feminist definition of womanhood which is simply based on who is within the movement at large will forever be correct, as historically that has never been the case.
I also think that if a man wanted to harass a woman in a bathroom they likely wouldn’t transition to do it, they would just do it- and unfortunately they do. This is a fantasised scenario that villainises trans women.
And finally, do not say you have nothing against trans women when you would prefer their identities ripped away from them, do not say you don’t hate people but you hate society whilst supporting ideologies that lead to the bullying, murder and suicides of thousands of transwomen. Trans women have a 34% higher mortality risk than men and 60% higher mortality risk than cis women so your bigotry and exclusion has a real detrimental effect.
